Post by maxwellsearcy on Jul 27, 2011 14:02:38 GMT -5
I could readily find a swarm of friends and relatives that would jump at the chance to say I don’t need any help being stupid, and after reading the 2008 Nicholas Carr article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” I’d have to agree with that swarm. Examining the verbose article in my Google based web browser, I tried to clear any bias from my apparently web-addled brain— after all, I was born into a generation that lives out half of its life on the Internet. Despite my best efforts at quelling my uncertainty— an uncertainty that Carr calls appropriate late in the article, writing “…yes, you should be skeptical of my skepticism.”— I found myself raising argument after argument against Mr. Carr’s premise that the great search god is poisoning my mind.
Chief among my issues with this premise is Carr’s aversion to change. The writer’s assertion that relying on external sources of information will harm my thought process is just plain silly. Consider a thought experiment brought up by departments of Philosophy at the universities of Arizona and Washington in the article, “The Extended Mind.”
A tourist asks Chris, a young man, how to get to the courthouse. The young man accesses his memory of the courthouse and tells the tourist the building is on Main Street and 3rd. At the same time, across town, Tom, an elderly man with Alzheimer’s, checks his calendar to see that he has an appointment at the courthouse. Not trusting his faulty memory, he keeps a notebook with him to recall details such as names, phone numbers and locations. He uses the notebook to see that the courthouse is on Main and 3rd.
The story reminds me of a sentiment a teacher once shared with me. There are two kinds of knowledge: knowing something already, and knowing how to find out. Our minds are made up of both our environment and our thoughts. There’s no practical difference between Chris’s tucked-away memories and Tom’s notebook, is there?
Carr’s use of the Sergey Brin quote, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off,” seems intended to be off-putting or strange. However, the idea of instant access to any information is tantamount to omniscience. There’s nothing inherently strange or wrong about wanting to know more, and certainly thinking more quickly and being directed to more relevant information online is a positive thing. Overall, though Carr’s aversion to and misgivings towards Google and the web’s “shift in how we think” may have been an appropriate response in 2008, my mind’s moving a little fast for 2008 nowadays, and I’m sure I have my internet reading habits to thank.
Clark, Andy, and David Chalmers. "The Extended Mind." Analysis 58 (1998): 10-23. Web. 26 July 2011. <http://consc.net/papers/extended.html>.
Chief among my issues with this premise is Carr’s aversion to change. The writer’s assertion that relying on external sources of information will harm my thought process is just plain silly. Consider a thought experiment brought up by departments of Philosophy at the universities of Arizona and Washington in the article, “The Extended Mind.”
A tourist asks Chris, a young man, how to get to the courthouse. The young man accesses his memory of the courthouse and tells the tourist the building is on Main Street and 3rd. At the same time, across town, Tom, an elderly man with Alzheimer’s, checks his calendar to see that he has an appointment at the courthouse. Not trusting his faulty memory, he keeps a notebook with him to recall details such as names, phone numbers and locations. He uses the notebook to see that the courthouse is on Main and 3rd.
The story reminds me of a sentiment a teacher once shared with me. There are two kinds of knowledge: knowing something already, and knowing how to find out. Our minds are made up of both our environment and our thoughts. There’s no practical difference between Chris’s tucked-away memories and Tom’s notebook, is there?
Carr’s use of the Sergey Brin quote, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain, you’d be better off,” seems intended to be off-putting or strange. However, the idea of instant access to any information is tantamount to omniscience. There’s nothing inherently strange or wrong about wanting to know more, and certainly thinking more quickly and being directed to more relevant information online is a positive thing. Overall, though Carr’s aversion to and misgivings towards Google and the web’s “shift in how we think” may have been an appropriate response in 2008, my mind’s moving a little fast for 2008 nowadays, and I’m sure I have my internet reading habits to thank.
Clark, Andy, and David Chalmers. "The Extended Mind." Analysis 58 (1998): 10-23. Web. 26 July 2011. <http://consc.net/papers/extended.html>.